Excelsior or TESC

[baomiller]

Hi everyone, I am new to this site. I am trying to decide on which school to choose Excelsior or TESC. Can anyone give me some input on the schools? Thanks

[nj593]

Hi everyone, I am new to this site. I am trying to decide on which school to choose Excelsior or TESC. Can anyone give me some input on the schools? Thanks

Im a tesc student. :mad: They are great because they take anything for credits. Remember that spelling bee that you did in 4th grade that will count towards a language. :p And that volcano will count towards a natural science.
Sorry ! They arent that bad. Everyone has different reviews on them. Mine, is that while their customer service could be alot better, their system for giving credits is great.
They dont really care about a pre-applicant or an applicant at all. They do care somewhat once you register and thats only after you speak to someone from Academic advisement.
Excel seems to be ok but they dont seem to offer many degree options.

[baomiller]

Thanks for the feedback. I am leaning towards TESC because of the guided study courses they offer. Plus, they have reduced enrollment fee for military spouses.

[CLEP101]

Thanks for the feedback. I am leaning towards TESC because of the guided study courses they offer. Plus, they have reduced enrollment fee for military spouses.

I'm graduating from EC and my wife will be graduating from TESC. I like that school for her because she can fill up all her electives with FEMA credit. Plus they have more degree options than EC. She'll be getting her BA in Foreign Language, Spanish. Excelsior College was more convenient for me especially since they only require 3 SH English.

[MISin08]

I chose EC because at the time I was deciding, info was easy to find on their site and I knew I would major in business, which made the number of degree options less important. FEMA was not important because I had a year of B&M classes and I'm not in quite that much of a hurry. To the extent that I might ever have to say the name of the school, Charter Oak would have been my first choice, but info was not as easy to find (self-directed learner, hello?) and I wanted a major. I've been happy with the choice since enrolling, they get the job done and I am not paying an arm and a leg.

Phillip

[NAP]

There are pros and cons to each one of the Big 3 depending on your current credits, goals, and needs, which will guide you to the one that is best for you. For instance, I would like to use GRE Subject exams for credit. Excelsior offers up to 30 credits for each of these exams including up to 18 upper level credits (with an 80th percentile score). Charter Oak offers 18-24 credits with a 40th percentile score. Thomas Edison offers no credit for these exams, but awards lots of free credits through FEMA.

Also, Jennifer and Alissa did a lot of work putting together some cost comparisons for the Big 3 that you can look at here:

http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...kdown.html

I know that Excelsior has a new scholarship fund for military spouses. They may reduce their fees, too, but I am not sure about that.

What majors are you interested in pursuing?

[baomiller]

I am looking to pursue a Business degree with a concentration in HR. Excelsior seems like a very good school too. My goal is to try to graduate as soon as can. I am thinking about taking some courses from ALEKS and Straighterline too. I looked on the ACE website and they are both on the list for credit. Thanks for all of your input guys.

Bao

[kevin7314]

Depends on your situation and the available methods for getting credit.

I have over 160 credits from a variety of universities so TESC was by far the best choice.

I will have a BA in Math/Natural Sciences if I can scrape together $3,000.

[baomiller]

I have two kids and a very busy lifestyle. Which school do you guys think is easier or more lenient? I am not afraid of hard work. I just don't want a lot of busy work.

[alissaroot]

They are about the same as far as difficulty. All three have the typical sort of general education requirements along with requirements within the major and upper level credit. You will be taking a lot of the same exams as the students from the other schools no matter which one you choose. All three schools will take a lot, if not all, of your prior credits.

Some people would prefer COSC because they only require 15 upper level credits, but have stricter general ed. requirements, while others would prefer EC because they only require 3 credits in math and English for general ed., but require 30 upper level credits. It depends on what you perceive to be difficult.

The very best way to decide which one is best for you is to sit down and draw up a degree plan fitting in the credits you already have as best you can for all three schools. Plan out which exams or courses you will use to fulfill requirements.Throw in a cost comparison while you are doing that. Then you will see which school offers you the path of least resistance to getting a degree (fewest courses or exams), as well as which one is within your budget. All three schools have the degree requirements on their websites. (You may have to start a free MyEC account to access the single-subject major requirements on EC's site.)This will help you avoid surprises later. It won't be exact, but it will give you the best idea of which school is for you. I have done this for other people, and I usually found that TESC would require fewer exams/courses, but EC would be cheaper.

However, now that TESC requires 300-level or above courses for upper-level, I think the number and difficulty of exams/courses will be about the same, but TESC will be more expensive for their general degrees. I believe TESC still accepts 200-level as upper level for a single-subject major? If you have a community college near you offering the courses you need then that may be the degree plan that will require the least amount of credit at the 300-level or above, but busy work there will be. History or psychology as a major might work well with this for TESC, since there are so many exams in those two fields. Your best bet for avoiding busy work is to come up with the degree plan that requires mostly exams, not courses. The cost comparison thread NAP posted the link to has several examples of degree plans that are almost all testing-out road maps.

Other comparisons that are often mentioned:

COSC and EC require a pesky Info Lit credit, but TESC doesn't.

COSC and EC graduate students every 3 months, TESC graduates students every four months. [Edit] Excelsior and COSC graduate students every other month, TESC is every three or four months. Oops![End Edit]

COSC and TESC accept CLEP English Comp. w/essay, EC does not. You can still test out of the English requirement with either the ECE or the Uexcel exam.

COSC and EC allow monthly payment plans, TESC does not.

People generally like the names of TESC or COSC better than EC.

TESC accepts raw fema credits (25? 27?), but EC and COSC require that they be transcribed through another school, costing $$. However, COSC and EC both accept more fema credits than TESC once they've been transcribed.

COSC has a capstone course requirement. EC and TESC don't.

TESC accepts some "D" grades, P.E., and those one-credit introduction to college courses, EC doesn't.

EC and COSC award letter grades and give GPAs for prior credit that has been letter-graded, as well as for many exams. TESC only letter grades and awards GPAs for courses taken from TESC.

Customer service comparisons usually favor either COSC or EC, but this is subjective and many posters here have had no trouble with TESC service.